Violins have widely been used for dance music, concertos, and the like because they produce gorgeous sound. Thus, a violin is a well-known bowed string instrument that produces sound by rubbing one or more strings with a bow or the like. Although violin music is very popular, the number of violinists is quite fewer than the number of players who play other string instruments such as guitars.
The primary reasons why the above-mentioned situation arises are as follows: First, as shown in FIG. 1, a player who is to play a violin 1000 generally needs to master the basic position. With the basic position, the player needs to put a tailpiece of the violin 1000 on her left shoulder 1002, sandwich the tailpiece of the violin between her left shoulder 1002 and jaw 1004, and grip a neck 1008 of the violin with her left hand 1006. Thus, a player should grip the neck 1008 with her left hand 1006 and adjust the pitch of sound by pressing a string (for example, string 1010) with her left finger 1016 while holding the tailpiece of the violin between her left shoulder 1002 and jaw 1004 as described above. Therefore, it is generally very difficult to maintain the basic position in a stable manner.
Furthermore, when a player plays the violin 1000 as shown in FIG. 1, her left hand 1006 grips the neck 1008 of the violin 1000 while greatly bending back and twisting. Thus, a joint of her left hand 1006 nearly reaches a limit of its range of motion. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that adult people whose joints have become stiff can hardly move their own left finger 1016 accurately, for example, from the string 1010 to another string 1011 in order to change the pitch of sound, except for people who have practiced the violin since their childhood.
Additionally, when a player plays the violin 1000, she needs to hold a bow 1012 with her right hand 1014 and rub a desired string with the bow 1012. As shown in FIG. 2, she needs to move the bow in a first direction 1022 when rubbing a low-pitched string of the violin 1000 (for example, string 1020) and move the bow in a second direction 1026 when rubbing a high-pitched string (for example, string 1024). Therefore, when a musical composition to be played includes both of pitches of the string 1020 and the string 1024, the player needs to move her right arm handling the bow over an angle of a degrees. Considerable skill is required to change pitches accurately by such movements in a state in which the aforementioned basic position is maintained. Thus, it will take a long time to acquire such skill.
As described above, it is difficult to master playing the violin. Particularly, it is very difficult for adult people to make progress even from an elementary stage. Therefore, there has been a problem that the number of violin players does not increase while the violin is a very popular musical instrument.